Meredith left her job as a graphic designer to become a stay-at-home mom after her daughter was born. During this time, she created her blog In Sock Monkey Slippers, started her own recipe development company, and was a finalist in the 2013 SAVEUR Blog Awards. At the end of 2015, insockmonkeyslippers.com evolved into Steele House Kitchen, a space where Meredith shares moments of laughter, inspiration, and creativity around good, honest food.

On Becoming a Stay-at-Home Mom:

For many years, I was in advertising and graphic design, behind the scenes, and photo shoots, and everything. Everything was just fast paced. And then my husband and I became pregnant, and very excited, but things just kind of went wrong from day one. And Mia decided that she wanted to come out four months early, which left me kind of… Everything stopped. Your job stops, your life stops, and you end up just living in the hospital. So we did. I lived in the hospital for five months. She came home perfectly healthy; just smart, great kid. But she came home and had immune sensitivity. So she couldn’t be out in the world.

We were imprisoned in our house for a year until her immune system could catch up with a regular baby and toddler at the time. So obviously, I had to leave my job. And you know, cooking has always been one of those things that I’ve just absolutely loved from the time I was little. It’s just always been in my life. It’s not that being a mom is boring. It’s the complete opposite, but I kept looking for something for me to do, just to have… So I can just take 30 minutes a day just to become myself again. I just went back to my passion which was cooking, and then also photography, which I’ve been doing ever since I was a teenager. So I realized that I wanted to cook for my daughter who was now able to eat foods, and she had very sensitive gastro problems because of prematurity.

Everything had to be very strict, and very pure, and no preservatives. Not even jarred baby food was good, because some had food coloring in it. She’s allergic to food coloring and just everything. So I just broke it down to basics and started making baby food. And I had the blog to let everyone know how she was doing in her transition from hospital to home.

And then all of a sudden, I was like, “Well, you know, we’ll just cook baby food. Let’s put this recipe,” because people were starting to ask for it. And then I had a baby food company come and say, “Could you start doing recipe development for our company?” This was crazy. Maybe this could be my next transition in life. It’s becoming a light-bulb moment. Let’s maybe try this out.

On Starting Her Company, MBS Recipe Development:

It really came in a time when my husband changed careers and decided he wanted to be a sommelier. So he wanted to go back to school, which left us with no income. I was already working for Disney at the time, doing recipe development for a few websites of theirs. I thought, “Well, you know, let’s pay more attention to the recipe development company. Let’s create a company, pay more attention to this. Put blogging on the sideline for right now, so I could basically pay the mortgage.”

And it worked, and it was something I really, really enjoy doing. So it’s really strange how blogging can take you other places than just a blog. It was just one company after one company. I started with Disney, then BBDO, which is a PR company, came and started working with a lot of their clients. And now, I work for pretty much almost all the major PR companies. I work with some small ones, too. PR companies are my most prevalent client, but, I also work for some local restaurants. A lot of editorial…I work with a lot of local magazines here, statewide magazines.

On Her Cookbook, Effortless Entertaining Cookbook:

I got a call one day from a publisher, and they just said, “We would really like to do a book with you.” I thought, “Okay. Am I ready for this?” I’m not really sure, and I said, “Well, what’s the timeline?” They said, “Well, you’ve got about four months.” I thought, “Oh, no. Sorry, go find yourself someone else because this isn’t going to work.” But I thought about it, and it was one of those very failsafe contracts where when you publish a book through a publishing house, they do, I wouldn’t say own the book, but they’re very responsible for the book. So if things fail, you kind of have a good padding to fail on. And I kept thinking, “Well, I know I want to write a book. Maybe this is the way to go,” just to get my feet wet and see if this is going to be safe.

I thought, “Okay, let’s just see how a cookbook is even written,” because I did not know the first thing about it. So they walked me through the process, and gave me a nice advance so I could leave work. And it’s been good so far. So we sat there and had a brainstorming session about what we were going to do, and I think it all just came along when I was in my office staring at racks of wine that my husband is hoarding for, you know, clients and everything. I thought how we entertain a lot. Like every weekend we’re trying to… I test recipes on our friends, he tests wine on our friends. So let’s write a book about that.

So we wrote a book about entertaining. How about we do it effortless? And I said, “Okay. Effortless Entertaining,” and that was the name of the book. It’s a collection of seasonal recipes that you can pull together ahead of time really simply or pull together in the last 20 minutes.

It was a fun book to create, because we had a lot of people come over and help me out with the photography and everything.

Another good thing about having my husband, you know, in the drink business was he was able to pair almost every recipe with wine or beer. So I think when you’re waiting for your party and you’re about to get in, you’re at the grocery store and you’re buying everything. You come to that wine aisle, and you’re like, “Oh, what I’m I going to serve? What’s cheapest or what’s the best?” It’s so confusing. And so he’s been able to provide a few options for everything, and make it easier.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Not that many. I totally missed the days of PBS, those cooking shows. If PBS is on rerun, I’d watch all those. I like America’s Test Kitchen. Sometimes I’ll just go with some old school Ina Garten. She’s pretty awesome, but I rarely watch cooking shows. I rarely have time to turn on the TV.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

A Thought For Food, Brian Samuels. That’s a great blog. I absolutely love it. Brian and I have been on a few media trips before. And the way he cooks is very fresh, and very creative. And some of his recipes really inspire me on, “Oh, that’s a great combination. I never even thought about that.” So definitely that one. I also…I don’t know if it’s really like a food blog but Serious Eats. I like that one a lot. There is a cocktail blog I’m really into right now, it’s more of a website called Punch. I enjoy reading and look forward to their post. It’s really informative. Those are the three right now that I read a lot.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

I’m not on Facebook too much. Snapchat either. But I do love Instagram. So a lot of food stylists I follow on Instagram, I like Jamie Oliver’s account. I know that’s just really basic, but I worked for him for a little bit and their whole department is really fun to follow.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

My most favored item is my grandma’s strainer. It’s really cool. It was her grandmother’s. It’s like 1901. It’s this really punched metal thing that looks like it’s been beaten up. But it’s my most treasured thing. If that was not in my kitchen, I don’t think I could function. It’s huge. It’s like the size of a large wok. It’s amazingly that big.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

Anchovies. I hated Anchovies as a kid, and I put them in everything now. Every salad dressing is gonna have anchovy in it. Sometimes I just…like pizza dough, like a flat bread. Put a little anchovy on it, and it’s just so good. It’s ridiculous, but like…and fish sauce. I didn’t like fish sauce and miso. Things like umami flavors that you can never even tell that they’re in a dish, but lend this nice blanket to kind of push up your flavor. So miso is definitely something that I did not like for a long time, but I’d put it in my chicken stock and it’s really nice. It brings a great flavor, and anchovies in my salad dressings.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

There is one I’ve enjoyed and I look through it a lot, because it’s a seasonal cookbook. I think pretty much any seasonal cookbook really makes my life easier, because I know I can just switch to that season because we do eat very seasonally here. But there’s one called The Farm.

The Farm, that makes my life a lot easier. It’s very simple recipes, and it’s such a great story. I love cookbooks that have good stories. April Bloomfield cookbooks are wonderful. And The Flavor Bible is my bible. It does not leave my desk. It is with me wherever I go. For those who don’t know, it is this compilation of flavor pairings, basically anything. Any food, any flavor, any season. Reads like a dictionary. You just pick it up, go to the food you want and see what will pair. I think I use it on a daily basis.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Everything, there is always music. Sometimes like I’ll have interns come in and they’re, you know…they put dance music on. I’m like, “Okay, it’s a dance day. Let’s do it.” But right now I’m listening to Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, a lot of him right now. That just makes me want to cook. It’s like outrageous, kind of soul and got a beat. It depends on what I’m cooking, too. If it’s in the winter and it’s like a slow risotto, I get some Nina Simone or some Miles Davis.

Emily started The Pig & Quill in 2012, and most recipes on her blog are heavy on the plants and low on refined sugars and starches though she is a firm believer in moderation. She is also a new mom.

I am so happy to have Emily Stoffel of The Pig & Quill joining me here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Emily’s.)

On Cooking as a New Parent:

It’s definitely driven a little bit more by convenience. I used to just cook whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and now, a lot of what we are doing in the house is meals, particularly dinners, where you can prep a lot of things in advance a little bit here and there throughout the day. I can prep a little bit during the first nap. I can prep a little bit during the second nap. And then by the time she goes to sleep, and we’re having dinner at night, there’s very little that’s required to bring it together, and we can still eat at a reasonable hour.

A lot of that is relying on things like a slow cooker, or, I use my rice cooker for everything. I’m cooking a lot of things in the broiler. I didn’t used to do that a bunch, but it’s such a fast way to cook protein. So that’s changed my game a little.

And my husband’s a great sport about the fact that we eat the same three or four meals in rotation, which we did not used to do. It used to be something different every night. We just have go-to’s that we know we can pull off in a moment’s notice. So there’s a lot of that, but still trying to keep things interesting.

I wasn’t such a really big proponent of the slow cooker actually before I had Lana. I know a lot of people are super hardcore slow cooker fans. I guess I just didn’t really give it a chance. I thought, “Oh, it’s for everything. Let it go…Whatever. I can do the same thing on my stove,” but it is really nice to be able to start something in the morning and then be able to leave the house and run errands or whatever and come back. I use my rice cooker for oatmeal which makes breakfast a no-brainer. So one of us can get up in the morning and start the oatmeal.

When we first had Lana, when she was a newborn, one of us would sneak out of bed before she would wake up in the morning, because she sleeps in our room, and put out all the oatmeal toppings and the ingredients and everything and set it. And then by the time she was up, it was ready to go. So we wouldn’t have to worry about making breakfast for ourselves. So yeah, I use that. I even hard-boil eggs in my rice cooker.

It’s pretty incredible. If you have a steamer insert, you just throw the eggs on top while you cook the rice. The time the rice is done, your eggs are done, and it’s perfect. If you want soft-boiled eggs, you can do it when you cook your white rice. And if you want hardboiled eggs, you do it when you cook your brown rice.

On Putting a Meal Together Quickly:

I mentioned that I like to use the broiler a lot. So I marinate a protein throughout the day. And then I can just pop it in the broiler when Lana’s napping or goes down for the night. And it usually just takes ten minutes to cook a protein that way.

I have a couple recipes on my blog. One is the shoyu chicken, and that’s super easy. It’s just chicken thighs that you marinate, and broil, and serve it with white rice or whatever side you want. And then the other one is a pumpkin curry which takes a little bit longer to do, but again, it’s something where I can do different elements throughout the day. And then it’s topped with a crispy, spice crusted tofu, and that is done completely under the broiler.

And even if you just look at the recipe for the tofu element, we put that tofu on salads. Sometimes, I just have it in a bowl with roasted veggies. So even if you’re not into curry or you’re not doing the pumpkin curry part of it, the tofu is super clutch. We do that all the time.

On How to Make Cooking Fun:

This is a cop out, but when we had Lana at first, we did a lot of the grocery meal delivery kits that are popular right now. I know that there’s Sun Basket, and there’s HelloFresh. And I know a lot of different ones that folks do. Some are organic, some are not. And that’s something that I probably never would have considered doing before I had kids. But it’s fun because they have the instructions written out so clearly step-by-step with those meal kits that it’s super easy for two people to tag team a recipe. You can just say, “Here’s where I started,” or “I left off at this step.”

Unlike some recipes, traditional recipes, including the ones that I write, a lot of times, the items that you have to prepare are called out in a different color or something like that, so you can see exactly what you need to do to this fruit or to this vegetable before it goes to the cooking stage. And you can break up the responsibilities that way.

We found those actually really helpful because it was a fast way to still be cooking together in the kitchen, something that was homemade. But A, you don’t have to go to the grocery store and B, just the way that the recipe is written, it’s really easy to do it on your own. But if you’re moving around the kitchen with multiple folks or something like that, it’s easy to make that come together.

The other thing that’s fun is we don’t go out a lot for dinner anymore. So when we’re feeling not super inspired, we’ll invite people over to just have hors d’ oeuvres here or something like that. And that’s a good way to get engaged about cooking again. You don’t feel like, “Oh my gosh, I’m just making dinner for myself to get by.” You feel like you’re entertaining which is a refreshing way to feel when you don’t get a lot of fun evening time. So that’s something that’s invigorated my time in the kitchen.

On Her Food Heroes:

Well, aside from my family, so my mom first and foremost, I learned so much from her just growing up in the kitchen, and her dad like I mentioned, just having exposure to that at a young age, and my dad as well.

In terms of people that inspired me, I guess if you think about the Nigella’s or Ina Garten, those types of folks even before Food Network was anywhere near where it is today, those were the types of folks where I just really admire. They’re cooking super un-fussy food that’s just delicious. It just tastes good. They don’t necessarily have a hook or a theme. They just make food that’s accessible and super tasty. And they deliver it in such a seductive and enticing way without really trying.

And I know that now, they’re these big brands, and they’ve got marketing up the wahoo. But back in the day of Yan Can Cook or The Frugal Gourmet, I used to watch those folks on PBS, and those were just people that cooked food that they knew they would enjoy. There wasn’t really any big spin to it.

Those are the types of folks that I think I learned the most from, just seeing their passion and seeing how that can translate into something that’s educational and entertaining. I also had a really unabashed girl crush on Giada when I was in college to the point where I would have dreams that we were best friends hanging out in Santa Monica. It was super creepy.

On Her Blog:

I had sat down with one of my good friends, and we were doing this life mapping of everything that we wanted to do in the next several years. And I told her that starting a blog was something that I really wanted to do, and I started The Pig & Quill without doing a lot of research, without coming up with a big plan for a brand or an image or even an idea of how the site would look.

It was just like I told her, “This is what I want to do.” We brainstormed a bunch of names. I bought the domain name, and then I sat on it for six months. And then it was bugging me that I had spent $13 to register this domain name and hadn’t done anything with it.

So Labor Day weekend of 2012, we actually stayed home that weekend, it was a stay-cation, and I was like, “Okay, this is the weekend that I’m going to start the blog,” and I launched it without a lot of research or anything. The images were awful, but it was exactly what I wanted it to be. It was just me talking about the food that I liked but also talking about how food fit into my life and adding a personal storyline to each post.

So yeah, it wasn’t really like, “Oh my gosh. I have this vision that I’m going to be a food blogger.” It was just something that I did spontaneously, and I’ve had to learn the ropes as I’ve gone along. Fortunately, there’s a ton of inspiration out there these days to help me grow, but it’s a crazy space, food blogging, because there’s so much opportunity and so many different angles and approaches that you can take with your blog. And I went into it with, like I said, with a really unclear vision. I was just like, “I’m going to get this up today.” And hindsight being 20-20, I would have mapped out my look and my voice a little more before I started, but finding my way has been part of the fun.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I watch Master Chef Jr. When I’m over at my in-laws or my mom’s house, I watch Chopped. That’s always fun. Sometimes, we pause it and say what we would do with the ingredients if we were given the basket. I don’t watch a lot food TV anymore these days.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

Oh, wow. There are a lot. I really love i am a food blog. Everything that Stephanie makes I want to eat it immediately. Two Red Bowls, the photography is ridiculous, Fix Feast Flair, Kale & Caramel. I’ve only been reading Kale & Caramel in the last, probably, six months, but her voice is…I feel like I just want to be friends with Lily in real life. She cracks me up, and she does a really good job of doing what I really like doing in food blogs, which is pairing a little bit more of personal anecdotes with recipes. She does a lot of that.

Bev Cooks was one of the first food blogs that I read back in the day. She is hilarious. And she has two kiddos. They’re twins, and they’re the most adorable people ever. Her Instagram is just ridiculous. Wit & Vinegar, Billy’s really funny. I think his aesthetic is really different from anything that anyone else is doing.

I really like reading Dessert for Two because Christina’s got a little one that is Lana’s age. So it’s been fun reading her blog and seeing her daughter at the same stage that Lana’s at. We were pregnant at the same time. We’re not BFF’s or anything, but I stalked her throughout our pregnancies, and that was really fun.

Chocolate and Marrow, I really like Chocolate and Marrow. Brooke just does crazy, creative stuff, really, really delicious things, really indulgent and just beautiful stuff.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

Snapchat, I just haven’t really gotten into yet. I would say of those things, I probably use Instagram the most. Violet Tinder, she’s really great. She has just a super rainbow-hued, really fun Instagram. And she does a lot of candy-colored things and water colors, and everything is just super poppy, neon bright. Miss New Foodie is really funny. She has some pretty funny captions for all of her indulgent eats.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

The thing that’s most treasured in my current kitchen is not even mine because I rent, but it’s our stove. We have a vintage Wedgewood stove in this kitchen that’s incredible. It’s really petite. The oven portion is really petite, but it heats up super-fast and evenly. It’s got a legit broiler which I mentioned earlier that really gets the job done.

In terms of an appliance, I have a garlic press, the same garlic press that I mentioned earlier where I think it’s called the Garlic Twist. It’s like this big piece of acrylic. And rather than crushing garlic through it, you put the garlic in, and you twist it. And because it’s one piece of plastic, it rinses out super easily. I use it probably every day. It’s not like the garlic presses where there’s all the little holes that you have to get all the stuff out of.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

I don’t really love mustard or I didn’t really love mustard, particularly yellow mustard, but I didn’t really use any mustard. And now, maybe because my husband is a huge mustard aficionado, I’ve come around on mustard. I actually really like hot horseradish-y mustards more so than a yellow mustard. But I used to really not be a fan of yellow mustard. I can at least tolerate it now.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I’m an awful baker, so I have to rely on cookbooks for baking or at least for measurements that I can gain inspiration from, so The Williams-Sonoma baking cookbook is really great. It’s got tons of cool recipes. But it’s also just good for if I need a jumping off point for an idea that I have.

I mentioned i am a food blog earlier, and her book Easy Gourmet is great. I’ve given it to a bunch of people because it’s just exactly what it says, easy gourmet. It’s really accessible. Anything by America’s Test Kitchen is good for the same reason as the Williams-Sonoma baking book. You just know that everything is really thoroughly tested, and it’s a good jumping off point. I still have a subscription to Bon Appétit and Gourmet. I know that that’s not a book, but those are good for keeping me aware of food trends and things like that.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Well, I always have this vision that if I ever quit my day job and I got to just spend all day cooking in my kitchen, that I would do it listening to Carole King or Adele on the record player. So I guess I’d say both of those ladies. Then for something maybe a little more poppy, I’ll dance in the kitchen to Britney Spears or Nelly Furtado, early 2000’s Nelly Furtado. The Who, it’s really fun.

Alexe is from a large Italian family where food is the center of everything. She’s been a food lover all her life and plans for meals way too far in advance. Alexe is a musician, and on her blog, she integrates music and food because she believes they’re the most important elements to entertaining.

On the Role of Food in Her Family:

“A big role” is definitely an understatement. My immediate family, we grew up in Northern Virginia, and my extended family’s in New Jersey. They’re a little louder and crazier. My mother grew up full Italian, and food was the center of everything that we did.

We ate dinner, my sisters and I, every night. My mom cooked every night except Saturday. She and my dad went on dates every Saturday, but it really was just the main thing that brought us all together at the end of the day. We could chat and catch up with each other. She also made breakfast every morning too, so we ended, began, ended our day with her food.

On Her Curiosity Around Cooking:

I have a lot of memories of my sister Brooke. She’s 14 months older than me, so we’re really close but I have memories of her playing out in the cul-de-sac while I was in at around five or four helping my mom get dinner together. So dad was probably around eight or nine. She would let me snap the green beans, the ends off the green beans, and then I graduated to other things like stirring the risotto and helping season the tomato sauce. It was a very gradual process, but it’s always been in my heart for sure.

I think it was just about getting food day to day with four kids, going in four different directions. Things were definitely hectic so she was helm of that, and I would say in my teenage years, I helped out a little more. I also lived at home through college, so that’s when I really was able to take the reins from her a little bit and actually make things for my mom and dad. That gave me a really good taste of how to prepare things on my own and make full complete meals.

On Her Blog:

It started when I got my first full-time job out of school. I was working at a start-up here in D.C. I was also living on my own for the first time, so I really was in control of my kitchen and what I was making every single day, which was something that I never really had experienced. But my colleagues would tease me. I’d go heat up my lunch. I’d have a full plate of a proper starch and vegetable and a meat, and it looked like I just prepared it. They would joke and also ask, “How did you do that? You love to cook. I didn’t know that.”

So that sparked an interest and made me realize a lot of people don’t know how to really cook healthy balanced meals. Some of them, they didn’t grow up with a mom like me cooking every single night of the week. So that was in 2011, and I got a new job in 2013, and I wasn’t feeling very inspired. I would come home at night and watch the Food Network. I also started to read a lot more food blogs during that time period as well, and I realized I have something to share.

So I worked on it for about two months before I posted my first recipe. I went back and forth with the name. I always knew I wanted to fuse music and cooking, so basically it started out of feeling uninspired at the day job.

On How to Make Cooking Fun:

I try to experiment with different spices. I have a subscription to Hatchery, it’s a monthly box subscription that comes, and it’s artisanal ingredients from people who make seasonings to rubs, to barbecue sauces. So that opens my eyes to ingredients that I never had cooked with before.

I love doing that. I think changing up the spices, changing up the vegetables. Sometimes, I get in a rut with every week at the store getting green beans and broccoli and kale, but I started to buy cauliflower a couple of weeks ago, so I was doing a lot with that. I made a soup. I roasted it. I just think making small tweaks can change things drastically.

On Her Music:

I mainly write on the piano, so that definitely lends itself to more ballad-y, maybe blues-y. I also experiment a little bit with the guitar, and my voice is more soulful than you would think. And I love soul and Motown music. So that’s my style, catchy melodies. I love doing it. It’s a great creative outlet.

I grew up on Elton John and Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen, a lot of classic rock. When I’m writing though, I definitely get influenced by women singer-songwriters. People as old as Carole King to newer people like Sara Bareilles, really anything. I’m getting really into the indie scene now. Spotify really suggests under the radar artists, and I really will listen to anything, and as long as it’s got grit and soul, then I’m in.

On Music and Food:

I definitely think that they complement each other. For me, the ultimate relaxation is coming home—when I’m not too frazzled—coming home from work, I put on music right away, and I usually opt for something a little more mellow and that matches my relaxed state that I get in in the kitchen.

When it comes to entertaining, we actually just had a dinner party for 10 people here, Saturday night. I let my husband make the playlist. He’s really into music as well. But I definitely think you have to know your audience, like who’s coming over, what you’re serving, what the mood is going to be like. We did more of electronic, indie tracks during the dinner party.

Knowing your audience, I think, helps me determine what kind of music. I know when my parents come over, they hate weird electronic or hip hop or rap, so I definitely don’t play that. So I think that’s the best tip. Know who you’re going to be entertaining.

On Choosing Between Music and Cooking:

At this point in my life, cooking is playing a bigger role. All through middle school and high school and college, I was really pursuing music very strongly. I made a couple of CDs. I was writing all the time, and I had a ball with it. Everybody knows the music industry is very cutthroat and very difficult. And I wasn’t sure if I had the guts to go full-fledged into it and sacrifice a lot of the things that I loved about my life. Not to say that you can’t have both, but there’s definitely a level of sacrifice I wasn’t sure I was willing to make.

So at this point, I would choose cooking, and the food blog has really opened up my eyes to all the opportunities that are out there. As far as I see it, they’re endless. Especially this day and age, my mom is always like, “You guys have so many opportunities at your fingertips these days.” So I felt a lot of momentum. With the blog, I’ve gotten to do great partnerships with brands. So I feel the results from it much quicker than I ever did with my music.

The Pressure Cooker:

Okay, so there’s one called Feastly, the website is eatfeastly.com and basically, it brings together home cooks like myself. You can post meals and sell basically a seat at your house for people to buy and come experience a dinner with you.

So if you’re looking to experience D.C. in a different way instead of going out to restaurants, come to my home, and I’ll prepare a fresh cooked meal for a much cheaper rate than you would pay going out to a fancy restaurant. So I love that.

I actually hosted my first meal back in the winter. I’m trying to get ramped up again because I think that’ll help grow a local following here in D.C. versus the blog I’d see as more national stuff. But actually bringing people into my home and feeding them live and seeing their reactions, I think that’s where all the magic happens.

He’s crazy, and I love his no-bs attitude, and he’s very motivating. So he helps me if I’m feeling like I’m in a rut, just to keep pushing and gives great tips on how to become the ultimate entrepreneur.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

I would say definitely somebody on Instagram since I spend a lot of my time there. I would say there’s this handle called, A Daily Something. It’s actually a blogger based in Northern Virginia so not too far from here in D.C., and she’d post basically little glimpses of life, and that always makes me feel warm and cozy and happy.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

It’s like a silver pot that was my great Aunt Connie’s that my mom used to make her sauce in, and she passed it down to me.

A lot of good food was made in that pot.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

I never really cooked a lot of Indian food, so it’s curry. It always smelled weird to me, but I love it now in Thai food and in Indian food.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Anything with Ina Garten. She has a great one I think it’s 10 or 12 years old. It’s called Make it Ahead, and she just has such a clean simple way of showing you how to entertain and make delicious meals that can feed a lot of people, which is something that I love to do.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I would say Tumbleweed Connection by Elton John. Most people my age don’t know it, but it reminds me of my dad and my family and feeling warm and cozy, which are some of the feelings that cooking conjures up for me.

On Keeping Posted with Alexe:

I would say Instagram. I post on that pretty consistently, so my handle is @keystothecucina.

On Starting The Woks of Life:

Food blogs are not new obviously but there were a couple of big ones that we did follow, me and my sister mainly, which were The Pioneer Woman. So she kind of blew up and she has her own show and she is like a complete celebrity now and also Smitten Kitchen. So those were the two blogs mainly that we enjoyed looking at and that sparked the idea like, “Why can’t we start a food blog too?”

After she (Sarah) graduated she wasn’t really sure what she wanted to do and she had the whole summer to think about that. So she came up with this idea of starting a food blog. My mom and I were pretty excited to help out and start cooking things and take photos. So it organically became this family thing. She had the idea we could call it The Woks of Life, and we could be the four people at the center of it, and it could be a family thing.

At the time my parents were sort of transitioning into that idea of living in Beijing and then I think four months after the blog was started they actually did move. I’m getting my timing a little bit wrong but she graduated and they were moving to Beijing and everything was kind of in flux.

It was a good way for us to gather our family recipes and have a way to connect with each other across spaces. We communicated mainly through iMessage, Skype and emails. I would email my sister from the library at midnight being like, “Hey, I’m really bored what did you eat today?” That kind of little small talk, chit chat that you would normally have but you don’t really have when you are at two different schools and your parents are living in Beijing. It was all sending pictures of food that we made and we were almost already in the mindset. So to actually make it official was not that big of a job. It became a great family thing and a way for us to stay connected.

On Growing Up in a Family Where Food Played a Big Role:

Growing up it was always gathering around a big table full of food, and everybody reaching across loading up their plates. It was just a really great atmosphere. My dad was very active in the kitchen and his sisters loved to cook too. So from a young age we were like sponges just soaking up all this cooking knowledge and the Food Network. Those were the glory days of the Food Network, classics like Emeril Lagasse and Rachael Ray was just starting and Giada De Laurentiis, she was unmarried and without her baby so that was when she was starting out too. It was a really great time to be interested in food.

We would always just be in the kitchen like, “What are you doing? Why are you doing that,” it’s a passive and an active thing. You’re just watching but at some point you kind of have to roll up your sleeves and when me and my sister were teenagers my parents would have dinner parties and we were like catering staff. We knew so much and we could handle so much. All of my parents friends would be like, “Oh my God your daughters, they are so effective in the kitchen.”

It was kind of always growing up with that mentality of food is important and food is at the center and that’s the big reason why we get together, extended family too, it’s let’s get together and have a barbecue or let’s go get dim sum. It’s just an integral part of not just our family specifically but I feel like the Asian experience in general. You have a big extended family and what’s the best thing to do when you have all these huge amounts of people in the room? You eat.

On Learning About Chinese Cooking:

When we were younger you’re seeing Emeril and you’re seeing Rachel Ray and they’re not making Chinese food. So it kind of got to a point where it was… my grandma always loved saying this to her friends. She brags about us like, “Anything you want, they can make it,” it doesn’t necessarily apply to Chinese food. So when my parents moved to Beijing it was tough because I never ate Chinese food anymore.

You can’t go home and have a home cooked meal. That was another big part of why we wanted to start the blog, is documenting these recipes, which for years was like, “a little this, a little that,” like, “eyeball it, just pour it until it feels right.” You can’t really make that. So Chinese cooking has definitely taken on a bigger part of our repertoire, I guess for me and Sarah, but it was always within the expertise of my parents.

On What Authentic Chinese Food is to Her:

For me personally authentic Chinese food is the food that I grew up eating. It’s the Cantonese spread of salt and pepper pork chops and the pork bone soup and the big plate of green veggies with garlic and the steamed fish. It’s all that but I think that today when you think about traditional Chinese food it’s almost like it’s more about who made it for you.

The food itself is anything that tastes good that’s pretty traditional. I guess authentic is traditional. But I think that it’s almost more important who made it for you. Going into Queens to visit my grandparents and going to the restaurants around there, a lot of those places are owned by people that are technically Chinese citizens but they opened a restaurant in Flushing, Queens. It’s almost in my mind this set of dishes that my family makes most often and eats most often. So you could watch A Bite of China which is this documentary and there’s tons and tons of variety and dishes that you could have that are traditional and authentic, but to me it doesn’t resonate as much because I didn’t grow up eating it.

On Who in the Family is More Traditional and Who Likes to Experiment:

I would say my mother is definitely the most traditional which makes sense because she grew up China and she came over to the U.S. when she was 16. So she definitely has the most knowledge so therefore the most respect for those traditional dishes. I think my dad has a similar level of traditionalism but he grew up more on the Americanized Cantonese side of things. So he has more of an expertise in take-out dishes. He is the king of General Tso’s chicken and the pork fried rices and the lo meins, he can churn out anything.

In terms of who’s the most experimental? I think it’s probably a tie between me and my sister. I think we sort of alternate in our bolts of lightning moments of culinary brilliance. There’s one dish that she made that was so good. It was kimchi french fries and it’s this delicious kimchi mixture and then you put over french fries and then you put cheese on top and it’s 10 times better than chili cheese fries. But chili cheese fries are also good.

And then I’ll make something like Sichuan peppercorn Cacio e Pepe. Which is just cheese and black peppercorns but I wanted to incorporate an Asian spin so I used Sichuan peppercorns and white peppercorns and black peppercorns. It can become hard honestly to come up with those interesting ideas. You can’t fully hang your hat on just traditional Chinese food because that’s good but sometimes you just want something more interesting. We’re definitely always watching and seeing what the food world is doing and trying to get ideas.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I do watch The Pioneer Woman just because it’s a wonderful escape from real life. She’s got this amazing ranch and she makes all this delicious, comforting, fatty food, it’s great. I love that show and Jamie at Home. That was a short lived show but that was a really good show by Jamie Oliver. He has a beautiful garden, he sits outside with a little cutting board and just cuts and reaches over and plucks fresh herbs, it’s great.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

So the sense that we get in the food blog world is that there’s just so many blogs out there and I think a lot of them don’t get enough credit because everybody’s really passionate about food and just telling their story. A couple that we like, one of them would be, Omnivore’s Cookbook which is this girl named Maggie and she actually was living in Beijing at the same time as we were and my sister and her actually met up and talked about food. She has a great blog that has authentic recipes. She makes them a little bit easier and more approachable but they still have that good authentic taste of Chinese food. So we really like her blog.

Another blog would be Little Cooking Tips which is a really cute, really friendly couple in Greece named Panos and Mirella, and they are so nice. They have really good Greek recipes. I just was on their website today and they had a finger licking feta and sausage mac and cheese. That sounds really good. They have a lot of good fusion Greek recipes. So we definitely like them. Hummingbird High, I think she was one of your most recent podcast guest. Her photography is gorgeous and her cakes look so good. Every time I want cake I just go to her Instagram and then I visually eat it.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

I’m not sure about Pinterest because that’s my mother’s domain. She is the Pinterest master but on Instagram we follow a bunch of people. But I would say a couple of really good accounts are…there’s one by Dennis The Prescott, his photography is gorgeous and all of his food just looks so freakin yummy. He’s just one of those people that I go to time and time again.

Another one that I really like is Symmetry Breakfast. I think it’s a couple and they just take pictures of breakfasts that they have together and it’s perfectly symmetrical. It’s just so perfect for somebody who’s a little OCD like me. It’s just beautiful, I love it. They’ve got really great stuff. They have like a bagette that’s cut open and baked with eggs inside. They know how to live. They eat good for breakfast. I just roll out of bed and I’m lucky if I have a piece of toast. So those are just a couple that I like but there are so many people on Instagram that have just amazing photography. It can be hard to keep up because so many people are just putting out amazing content but those are two that I love.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

I would say unusual for a nonChinese audience that is actually very useful is a tong device for picking up plates. If you put a hot dish in a steamer you don’t want to grab it and it kind of goes like this and then you can grab the plate and lift it out. That’s a really amazing underrated and not that well known tool. So for anybody listening, you should go buy one.

Most treasured I would say is probably my grandfather’s cleavers from my dad’s side. He was a chef and they actually had a Chinese restaurant for a number of years. We have his old cleaver that actually has his initials carved in the side. Because there are a bunch of chefs in the kitchen and you want to differentiate which one’s yours. We don’t use that one often but it’s still very sharp. It’s interesting. It’s years and years old but it’s still really good.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

Cilantro. I didn’t hate it. There are some people out there that hate cilantro, I never hated it but I never really liked it maybe until I was 14. It adds so much flavor. If you have a guacamole that has no cilantro, I’m sorry, but that’s not real guacamole. You need it. When you’re putting it on steamed fish with soy sauce and scallions and ginger, you need the cilantro, it adds a little something.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Ina Garten has a cookbook that is… I don’t know exactly what it’s called but it’s the pink one so people that know Ina Garten’s cookbook, there’s a blue one and there’s an orange one. But the orange one is Barefoot in Paris and there’s a pink one which is her basics cookbook. There is a chocolate cake recipe in that cookbook called Beatty’s Chocolate Cake it changed my life. This chocolate cake recipe is the only one you will ever need. It’s so moist and the frosting is perfect. It’s kind of sad actually because if you flip through the whole book, almost every page is totally pristine, and then when you go to this chocolate cake recipe, there’s just schmutz all over it. There are stains and drips of buttermilk because that’s how often I make that cake. This is more of a PSA than an interview question I feel because that cake is truly the best. We make it for friends and they rave. They love it.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

For my sister it would definitely be Nat King Cole. For me, I would say, if anybody’s ever seen the movie Something’s Gotta Give with Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson, that soundtrack is our favorite for cooking. It’s all French bistro music and whets your appetite and you feel so jazzy walking around the kitchen.

Meg is a proud New Englander who grew up on the sandy beaches of Cape Cod. Bread + Barrow is her space, where she shares her love of New England and recreates the magical moments from her childhood. Like memories of her dad’s culinary genius over a camp fire and her mother passing down the importance of family dinners.

I am so happy to have Meg Dubina of Bread + Barrow joining me on the show today.

(*All photos below are Meg’s.)

On Growing Up on Cape Cod:

Growing up on Cape Cod was really great. It’s a really beautiful spot to be a kid. It’s funny, the summers are so bustling, there are so many people, it takes an hour to get to the grocery store some days, where normally it would just be a 10 minutes drive. And then the winters are really desolate. So you kind of have this polar opposite. But it was a great spot to be a kid. The summers were full of beach days and going to the vineyard, and then the winters were very quiet and rainy. We didn’t get much snow on the Cape. I think that’s why we spent a lot of time in New Hampshire on the weekends, because I think my dad would go a little stir crazy if he was on the Cape all winter long. But some of those rainy, wet winter days were some of my favorite. My mom used to take us kids down to Woods Hole and have a cup of chowder, overlooking the wet landscape, which I still love to do. So it was a magical childhood.

On Her Interest in Cooking:

I think it was when I was little, I actually really did, my Easy-Bake Oven was probably my favorite. But other than that, growing up, I wasn’t so interested in it. My sisters and I often played restaurant, so that was one of our games. We had a little, now that I think about it, kind of creepy setup in our basement where we had, like, lawn chairs and a table, and we had a big menu that we’d write on the walls in chalk. But then in my teens and early 20s, I wasn’t interested in it much until I moved in with my now husband. That’s when I started looking back to things that we had made, because I was cooking for myself for the first time and was like, well, what am I going to make tonight? That kind of made me get more into cooking for myself and for other people.

My mom is actually a really good cook, she cooked for all of us. I’m the eldest of four, so there are six in my family. She always had a home-made dinner for us. She definitely taught me my basics. My aunt is also a really great cook, she’s been cooking her whole life, it’s been her passion, she’s obsessed. So they’re both resources that I always go to. Like, “How do make a Béarnaise sauce? How do I do this?” Roasting a chicken was one of my first things that was, like, “I don’t know how to do this,” so I would call them. But I also did look to bloggers and websites and cookbooks and a lot of it was trial and error. There was a lot of really bad cooking at first.

On the Importance of Family Dinners:

My mom was fortunate enough to be a stay-at-home mom. So that definitely helps, because you have your day to prep. Being a stay-at-home mom is a crazy job in and of itself, but I have also been a nanny for a really long time, that’s what I was doing to make money before I got into cooking and writing and things. I worked for quite a few families that found this to be challenging, because it really is. It’s hard to manage a full-time job, a household, children, and get dinner on the table by 6:00. It can be crazy. So obviously organization is key.

I think if you have children and you work and you’re planning on doing nightly meals, I think prepping on Sunday, knowing what your meals are going to be, either making them all and keeping them in the freezer or just, if you have a crock-pot, setting that, and just saying like, 6:00 or 6:30 or 7:00, or whenever it’s easiest for you, is dinner time and that’s that, we’re doing it.

Set a table. I think setting the table is huge, because sometimes if you just throw down a pile of forks and a pile of plates and say, “Okay, kids, dinner is ready.” It doesn’t always end up the way that you want it to. If you set the table and say, “Okay, five minute warning, we’re having dinner.” Then it gets the family to think about, okay, we’re sitting down together to eat and share a meal.

I like to start a meal with a prayer or something to say, because then it also gets the family all on the same page, you’re not thinking about, “I really still need to mow the lawn or do that laundry, or someone needs to do his homework.” You can get yourself all together in one space for a little bit of time.

On the Food in New England:

New England has a reputation of being stuck in their ways, and I mostly feel that that’s still true. Which is hard, it makes it a little tough for table sharing. Sharing these meals together or having the local spot to go, I don’t think it’s a very popular thing to do in New England, which is a little bit tough. But that being said, I feel like there are a lot of younger chefs that are coming out with these awesome ideas.

Island Creek Oysters is an Oyster company out of Duxbury, which actually happens to be where I went to high school. They have been doing some really cool things with getting the community together and doing an Oyster festival and really getting people involved with what they’ve been doing in their town. I know a chef, Patrick, who just started a restaurant at Applecrest Farms in New Hampshire and he too is really into, not only showcasing what New England cuisine could be, but also bringing people in and really getting the word out there of, like, wanting to bring in other people, collaborations and things. I think that that is really cool and that’s the way that I hope that New England cuisine is going to go. Because right now it can really be just stuffy pubs with chowder and fried clams. There is nothing wrong with that, those are great, too, but sometimes people I think are a little wary of changing their direction.

On One Thing She Wants Us to Know About New England:

I would like people to know that while we still are pretty old fashioned and that a lot of things haven’t necessarily changed, I still think that there are people here that are willing to see what we have to offer, and really use those resources, whether it’s the ocean or the farms or the mountains. I hope that people know that you can catch a fish one day on the ocean and then be frying it in the woods of the mountains that afternoon, which is pretty cool. I guess, I just hope that people realize everything that there is here and use it to their advantage.

On Hosting Photography and Styling Workshops:

I think how it all happened was Betty and I both realized that we were in the same State, we were like, “What? Let’s get together.” So once we actually met and realized that we not only both loved food, but we really like each other, that we wanted to start sharing that. I think that was the main reason for both of us in starting our blogs, was to share our heritage and where we’re from.

She has some amazing Chinese cooking on her blog and we want to showcase that with people, and really bring people that may not know each other together, and she’s a brilliant photographer. So I think that was another thing that we were, like, “Why don’t we just get people together, show them our cooking, show them how to use their cameras and make a beautiful meal out of it?” That’s where that whole thought process went.

We wanted to incorporate some unusual activities that maybe someone doesn’t do often, and we also wanted to base it around where we’re going to be. So we did a daytime workshop in Boston where we went to the SoWa, which is the south end of Boston, the Farmer’s Market. And we then cooked a meal with the produce. So in that vein we kind of decided that with going to New Hampshire, this little town of Tamworth is adorable. They have the New Hampshire Mushroom Company there as well as Sunnyfield Brick Oven Bakery, which you’d never think, like, these two awesome companies were in this one little town. So we were, like, maybe we can do some mushroom foraging. The man that owns the company is so sweet and he does this, basically a 4H club every Sunday, where he takes people out foraging and teaches them about the poisonous and also edible mushrooms. Then the bakery is inviting us in to watch them with their sourdough bread baking process. That’s something I’m really interested in, because growing a yeast culture scares me. I’m really intimidated by it.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Oh, none, I’m so bad. I love Ina Garten, but she’s probably the only show I can tolerate.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

Krissy from Cottage Farm, her stuff is beautiful. She was a floral designer, I believe, she just has a great aesthetic. I love also following Anna from Rifle Paper Company, hers, too, she just has a great vision. Really inspiring.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

I would say my copper pots that my grandmother gave me, I love them. But they’re really hard to keep clean and my KitchenAid, my husband bought it for me our first Christmas together, so that one is really special.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

I don’t think that there is one that I used to dislike. I’ve pretty much eaten everything since day one except beets. I still can’t handle beets.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Renny Darling, I don’t know if anyone even knows who she is but she has a really old cookbook, it’s called, Quick Breads & Cakes and I just love it. I don’t even know where you can find it anymore, you can probably order it online, but her banana bread recipe is the best. Then I have recently been going through The Original Boston Cooking School Cookbook, which is really interesting. I think it was from, at least the copy I have, is from the early 1920’s. Just seeing the ingredients in there, it’s so interesting. But it’s really cool, it’s inspiring.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

So I’m a huge dork and I listen to a lot of Broadway musicals if I’m by myself in the house, but if I have company over I usually put on like Edith Piaf or Regina Spektor, something a little more calming, a little less dramatic.

On Keeping Posted with Meg:

I’m @breadandbarrow on Instagram, that’s probably the place I update the most, which is kind of ridiculous, because I don’t update it that often. But there and then just on the blog.

Liz keeps a Kosher kitchen at home and food truly excites her. She is always on the lookout for great restaurants, farmers markets, food festivals, and passionate food innovators. Liz spends much of her time researching and exploring extraordinary dining and food events. And today, we’re going to chat about the Jewish holidays and, of course, the food that surrounds them.

I am so happy to have Liz Rueven, editor and chief eater of Kosher Like Me, here today.

(*All photos below are Liz’s.)

On the Five Jewish Holidays Starting the Fall:

So, we begin with Rosh Hashanah, which literally means, the head of the New Year and it’s the Jewish New Year. We eat foods that are symbolic of new beginnings and good luck. So we often eat sweet things. There’s an association most people know between apples and honey. Apples are an early fall fruit, and the honey is really part of the beginning of most meals where we dip the apple in honey, and we wish everyone a sweet New Year. A lot of the other foods are really about, bountiful, full wishes, for example, pomegranates.

Pomegranates have many, many seeds. I know that you read my post and my recipe for pomegranate and honey glazed chicken on one of my favorite websites, a website I contribute to, called The Nosher. Pomegranates have like millions of gazillions of seeds, they’re very difficult to dislodge, as you know, because I gave a little technique that I borrowed from a fellow blogger, a blogger friend of mine. But, the pomegranate is so plentiful in the fruit that we use it as a symbolic food, wishing that all of the good omens and good wishes will be as plentiful as the number of seeds in that fruit.

There are many other foods associated with Rosh Hashanah but, 10 days after that we go on to Yom Kippur, which is the most solemn day in the year, and there’s no food. So we fast for what turns out to be about 26/27 hours. But at the end of that fast, of course, there’s a feast, like in every culture after a fast. There are many traditional foods, that I don’t know are really symbolic, but we just tend to eat them. Different cultures eat different things, my background is Eastern European, I would say the most quintessential thing that we eat is a noodle pudding or kugel.

And then, right after that, we have a harvest festival called Sukkot, and people erect temporary structures outside, and people who are really observant, live in those, eat all three meals in those, and sleep in those. They’re called a sukkah, and when, for those of us who don’t eat every meal in them, we often try to eat dinner in them.

Invariably, it’s cold and rainy, all of a sudden the weather shifts in the northeast at that time, probably in Vancouver, too. And so the focus is really, not only on the harvest foods, but I always focus on the warming foods, so I start to integrate warming spices and dishes like soups and casseroles. It’s usually when I take out my slow cooker also. So this year, we’ll be posting a butternut squash soup, that should be really delicious. Butternut squash grows in the northeast at this time of year and it’s a great thing to just throw in the slow cooker and just have simmering.

If you’re eating outside in your sukkah, you’re going to want something like that and warm foods. All of the sudden we shift from the salads to things like that.

Then, we have the next holiday, which is a celebration of the laws that were given to us in Sinai, and it’s called Simchat Torah, which really means the joy of Torah, which are the laws. And in general, people do stuffed foods for this holiday. Things that imply full bounty, so that there’s a lot of joy. And then, we end the five holidays with Hanukkah, which is always focused on oil, which we never really eat very much of.

We fry things, donuts, potato latkes, all variations of things fried in celebration of the miracle that occurred, historically, when a vessel of oil that was supposed to last only a few days, lasted a whole week. Which, was enough time to produce more oil. So the oil thing gets really big, and what’s really fun is making lots of different kinds of pancakes, wheat pancakes, potato pancakes, sweet potato pancakes, zucchini, or apple, all sorts of pancakes, deep-fried, so for those of us who are more health conscious, it’s like a time of year where we say, “What the heck, we’re eating fried, it’s Hanukkah.”

So, that’s the five holidays.

On Starting Kosher Like Me:

My home is strictly Kosher, and when we’re away from our home, we do exactly what my grandparents did. My grandparents were immigrants from Poland, they came to the lower east side of New York City, and they found that there were a lot of choices of things to eat. They just started eating fish and vegetarian when they were away from their Kosher home. Today, we have so many great choices of vegetarian and vegan restaurants that it’s really almost effortless. In those days, people would have a side order of string beans, because that was what was available if you didn’t want to eat chicken, or meat, or whatever was offered in a restaurant, so it’s completely different today.

My intention was really to be a resource for people who honor the rules like I do, because when I travel, I do a lot of research. Friends would say, “If I’m going to Aspen, where should I eat? Where do they have a lot of vegetarian choices?” But what’s happened is, I write so much about vegetarian and vegan, because I write so much about what I do outside of my kitchen, that I have a much broader base of followers than I ever expected. I have vegetarian, vegan, Jewish, not Jewish, Muslim, all sorts of people who are also just interested in healthy food. Because I really only eat and only write about things that are happening seasonally anyway. It’s a trend and people really are interested in it. For us, it’s just the way we always eat.

On the Best Part of Being Editor and Chief Eater of Kosher Like Me:

I would say I love meeting with creative people who are either, small producers, for example, honey makers, who have small backyard apiaries, or people who are making inventive products like my friends at the Gefilteria in Brooklyn, who have revived the old tradition of making gefilte fish and they’re making it sustainable, interesting, healthy, hip again. I really love meeting with the makers and the farmers. I do a lot of work at farms, especially trying to support my Connecticut agricultural scene. I love meeting the farmers, and the growers, and the makers. I like that better than eating in restaurants and writing food reviews, actually.

When I started writing four or five years ago, the approach to reinventing traditional Jewish foods was not as vibrant as it is now. For example, I’m part of a kosher food bloggers network, and that’s what we call ourselves, The Kosher Food Bloggers Network, and we are all across the country, and there was so much interesting rethinking of traditional foods. Four or five years ago, it wasn’t as energetic or vibrant a community or a scene. I would say that has been a big and wonderful exciting surprise.

Whitney and Amy, from Jewhungry and What Jew Wanna Eat, as you know, I co-authored a book with them. Those are my friends. What was really exciting was that we brought such different perspectives to it, Amy coming from Connecticut originally but living in Austin, Texas, has a completely different view of things than I do here. Whitney was in Miami, she has since moved to LA, so now her view has changed again, but she was a southern girl. I have these roots deep in the New York area and there was one other, there were four of us who wrote the book, and we called the book, Four Bloggers Dish.

The other person who contributed was Sarah Lasry, and she comes from a much more observant background. She brought a whole different perspective, and she was the one who kept saying, “I think we need more meat in this book guys,” and the three of us are like, “I don’t know.” It was great, yeah, you’ve met some of the cream of the crop.

On Her Passion for Food:

I went back recently and I read my first blog post, which was in 2011, and I wrote about my grandfather. My grandfather was a traditional Jewish baker, and he came from Poland, he had three or four years as a young teen, as an apprentice, where he was sent away from his family, and he learned how to bake bread. When he came to this country, he baked bread and lots of other things, and I grew up with my grandparents coming to my home every Sunday. He would bring things like the most delicious rye bread, and onion rolls, and challah, and jelly donuts. So, he was one of my inspirations, but I have to say that my grandmother was a brilliant baker in her own right.

So it was just interesting that even though he would bring stuff home from the bakery, she baked also. The reason she baked, this really blew me away when I really thought about it, is because so many members of my family had food allergies, so she baked at home in order to avoid using eggs and dairy. She was a vegan baker. She was born at the end of the 1800s and she developed all of these recipes, never wrote them down, she couldn’t read, she couldn’t write, she was illiterate. But she developed all of these recipes, and it turns out, as I thought about it, they were vegan.

It’s just crazy because half my cousins and my sister were allergic to eggs and dairy. So, I would say my grandparents are my greatest inspiration.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Well, there’s a new show about to launch, that I really am very excited about, it’s called Holy and Hungry, and it’s with Sherri Shepherd, and she goes to lots of different people who cook with an eye towards their religious background. She interviews people with Hindu perspectives and beliefs, and Muslim perspectives, and Orthodox Jewish perspectives, she goes to Christian cooks who are making foods from the Bible.

This show to me is super exciting, you have to look for it, it’s called Holy and Hungry. To me, that’s the most exciting.

I love Chopped, of course, because I really can’t get over the kinds of ingredients that they throw at these poor contestants. I really admire them for being so responsive and clever and being able to keep their wits about them. I would just have a total meltdown but, that’s why they’re competing. The opposite of that is Ina Garten because she’s so soothing and you want to be in her buttery arms, and they’re very, not her arms, but the food is so buttery. So I would say those would be three shows that I do love.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

Well, I don’t know if you read The Kitchn, I really love The Kitchn, my daughter, who’s in her 20s, turned me on to it. It’s just such a huge resource. It covers so much and I love her how-tos, how to make a Caesar salad, how to handle winter squashes. I love what she does in that blog. I know she’s got a whole team.

I read and contribute to a blog called The Nosher, and so to nosh means to snack, so The Nosher really covers a ton of Jewish food trends, and edited by someone named Shannon Sarna, so her voice is very prominent in there, she’s like a master challah baker, she does all sorts of crazy and wacky challah recipes.

But of equal importance, she solicits posts from kosher and Jewish food bloggers who have very different perspectives on things. So there’s this great overview of what people are doing across the country and I love that. There’s a blog called, May I Have That Recipe, and it’s two sisters, I think they’re in Philly, and they write vegetarian, and vegan, and kosher, and their recipes are really inventive, and I’ve met them through my bloggers network. I really love what they’re doing. They’re smaller so props to them. They have a big readership, they really do. You can hear their voices in there, it’s really beautiful, and they act like such sisters, really fun.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

When you look at this, to me, it is the most beautiful feed on Instagram. He, I think it’s a he, shoots his rectangular, white, garbage pail with all of the scraps from a dish that he’s made, but he arranges them. They look incredibly gorgeous, and I think for me, there’s a little message about food waste, which is that we could be reducing and we could be reusing, well not reusing the waste, but using it differently because he doesn’t even post his recipes, he just posts the ingredients which you see in the garbage pail. All of his photos are identically set up. And it’s very rhythmic and interesting to see them.

I love, love, love him. I love David Lebovitz, who is in Paris. He’s got a very funny voice, and he writes all about baking and cooking as an American in Paris, and he’s a brilliant photographer, and he’s very funny. There’s another person from Philly, and her feed is called Food In Jars, and it’s all about her preserving, and conserving, and putting up ingredients that she loves, and I just find it fascinating to see what she’s doing. Food In Jars, it’s great.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

Well, I have a beautiful collection of ceramic handmade, plates, platters, bowls. I’m a really big sucker for big platters, big bowls. When I travel, I buy these things, which are really, really inconvenient and difficult to carry back. But I don’t care, I just feel like I’m bringing back the soul of an artist. I just get stuff, if you saw my kitchen right now, I have piles of tomatoes on a platter, and I have all sorts of things piled, like pears here in Connecticut in a big, deep, gorgeous hand-thrown ceramic bowl, so I would say, those are my most precious items.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

I don’t know, there aren’t that many things that I’ve really converted to liking. I like most things, the one thing I don’t like and I haven’t gotten to like it at all is smoky profiles. I just feel like I’m licking an ashtray. I have no interest in that at all. So if people gift me smoky salts, whoever is around is really lucky because I’ll pass them on right away. So I can’t say that I started to like something that I didn’t like, I would just say that’s what I don’t like.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Well, by training, I’m an art historian, so I think that I really love to read food history. I took a fantastic class at the New School in New York City, the teacher was Andrew Smith, and he wrote an encyclopedic book called, The Oxford Companion to American Eating and Drinking. If it’s 4th of July, or I’m thinking about, I don’t know, avocados or something, whatever it is, I might turn to his book first and see what he has to say about it.

Parallel to that, and right next to it on my shelf, is an encyclopedia, it’s called, The Encyclopedia of Jewish Foods, by someone who unfortunately has passed away. His name was Gil Marks, and he was a brilliant inspiration and researcher to his community, and so when a holiday comes up, I always look to him first, and I get an overview and a refresher. He covers everything, he covers the meaning of the holiday and the meaning of a food. And you can also just look into his book, just look up an ingredient, so it could be something like peaches. And he’ll talk about peaches, or he’ll at least lead you to a recipe for peaches. But beyond the history, I really loved The Forest Feast.

I love her work. I love these hand drawings and the simplicity of her recipes. It helps me to get out of my head and just keep it really simple. Also, I love Beatrice Peltre, La Tartine Gourmande, her photographs I think are among the most beautiful food photographs I’ve ever seen, and when I look at her work, her blog, or her book, which I have, that’s really awe inspiring.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Well, I really like hearing The Stones when I cook, The Rolling Stones. That’s real rock and roll and I’ll listen to anything The Stones have ever done and just be happy to play with that.

On Keeping Posted with Liz:

Well, a lot of my readers are still turning to Facebook. Everything is @KosherLikeMe. I post probably numerous times a day on Instagram, and you can subscribe to my blog and see what I’m up to each week.

On her blog, A Thousand Threads, Laicie writes about more than just food and recipes. She shares a lot about herself, from her wedding, travels and everyday adventures, she really puts herself out there for her readers.

On Her Blog:

I actually started my blog because I had a day job that was fulfilling, but not entirely. I was writing, but I was writing about a lot of technical subjects and didn’t have the chance to write about the more creative things or do the more creative things that I enjoy doing. And so, around the time…my husband and I had been together for probably around five years at that point. When he proposed to me, I decided that it was an excuse to write about something on the Internet.

I started writing about the process of planning our wedding and of our lives at the time. It evolved in that way, eventually, to really be a representation of our lives together, and ultimately that all came back to food, because, for us, it does totally come back to food, with everything.

The relationships that I’ve built on the Internet, because I’ve been open and been willing to have those conversations with people and go back and forth, I’ve made so many good friends. It’s really been a great experience, so I’m glad that I wasn’t overthinking it at first and it allowed me to open up and keep it that way.

When I was putting it out there on the Internet and there weren’t any faces to go along with it, there weren’t any reactions. And honestly, the people that I found on the Internet, when they did appear, were so supportive and so great that it was really a good experience for me from the beginning, that I was able to make those friends, who I almost felt more open with, in many ways.

On Her Interest in Cooking:

I’m a 4-H kid from way back in the day. I grew up in Oregon, and I was in 4-H, I rode horses, that was the biggest part of my 4-H. But from the time I was very young, I actually did the cooking side as well and competed in the cooking contests in front of a judge, and it was all a very fun thing for me. It was always made fun for me, I think, particularly by my mom, who was really always interested in cooking, especially in baking. And she makes these incredibly amazing desserts that are just nuts.

She taught me how to make those things, and she taught me and brought me through that whole process of, the terrifying process of cooking in front of a judge when you’re 12 years old. It is crazy but it’s awesome, and I think it really fostered my love of cooking. I had a family of cooks, my grandmother was constantly baking pies.

And in Oregon, we all had big gardens. The fruit that my grandmother always baked the pies with always came from her garden, that was something that was crazy, that you just don’t experience that as much over here, quite as much as I did there and growing up. And it made me love food very much, having all those people around me who also loved food.

Some places have 4-H, some places have FFA, it’s a country kid thing. Some kids raise cows, and then they sell them at the auction at the county fair. It’s a thing that essentially all leads to the county fair, which is where you exhibit your work that you work on throughout the year. It’s kind of like Girl Scouts, but with a very country lean to it.

On Her Cooking Influences:

I think that my mom is hands down my greatest cooking influence. My love for baking, in particular, is completely shaped by my mother. And also my love for gathering people, I think, was shaped by my mother. Just a week ago, she had this huge event at her house for all of the women from her graduating class from high school. I don’t even know if I could track down the people from my graduating class from high school.

I’m really impressed by her. She had all the women from her graduating class over and had this beautiful, beautiful brunch party out on her patio and cooked everything and made this huge spread of desserts. My mom’s cheesecake is the craziest cheesecake that you’ve ever had.

Chocolate éclairs are something that she had always made and always brought. She was always this amazing home cook, but also one who never shied away from something that was tougher, like a chocolate éclair. She would make these fantastic cakes for my birthdays and just things that were just amazing. And I always really respected that, and still do.

On Working With Her Husband on the Blog:

We manage it quite well, actually. We both are really busy all the time, we have a lot going on. I have a nine year old stepson as well, and so we have all these things happening. And I think that ultimately, the blog and our various projects, because we’re both so passionate about them, they bring us back together in this way that we’re creating something together.

There’s nothing like creating, being able to create something with your spouse and really be excited about the outcome of it and just geek out over whatever this thing is. We both cook for the blog as well, and we shoot things back and forth.

He’ll have an idea, and I’ll add to it, and it’ll go back and forth and become this thing that’s really incredible. Even with the photography, I’ll style it, and then he’ll take the picture, and then I do the editing. So we have this very collaborative relationship that goes back and forth, and it makes us stronger in every way.

On Being Oregonian at Heart:

It’s not hard for me to live on the East Coast, but I’m certainly sad not to live on the West Coast still. I grew up in Oregon, I truly think that it’s the most beautiful place in the world. My parents are there, I love it there, I love the people, I love the food. The food scene in Portland, it’s always been amazing, but over the last 10 years, it’s really gone crazy. I go back there, and I just feel so completely close to home. I grew up on the coast, near the ocean, and there’s things about that that I miss. The East Coast is very different, it’s got a very different ethos, it’s got a very different approach to food.

But also, I’ve learned a lot, I actually live just outside of D.C., in the country, and one thing that I love about that is that we visit a lot of farms in the area, constantly. We get our eggs from the farm, we get our milk from the farm, we get everything that we can as locally as possible. And that’s really, really a cool aspect of this particular part of the area, that I didn’t necessarily have in my coastal town in Oregon, that I really appreciate here.

On the Difference in Food Culture Between Washington, DC and Oregon:

I was a vegetarian for many years, and that will make the difference very stark for you if you go from the West Coast to the East Coast, in general. It’s much harder to find good vegetarian food on the East Coast than it is on the West, because there’s a real love for meat here. And I respect that too, because I’m no longer a vegetarian, and there’s a reason, because it’s delicious. That’s one really big thing.

It used to be more so that there was a real love for local food that was easier to find on the West Coast than it is on the East Coast. I think a lot’s changed in the last few years, definitely, the restaurants have changed completely in the way that they approach things, and everyone is starting to appreciate that sort of thing more. And that’s really refreshing, that changes a lot. It’s amazing how much food can impact your love of living in a place, because it’s so much a part of your daily life. I really missed that when I first moved here about 10 years ago. Now, I would say it’s very different.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I watch whatever’s on the Cooking Channel. Obviously, I watch Anthony Bourdain, anything that he does. I watch him on CNN now, because I love his travel show and what he does. I also love Ina Garten, she’s amazing. The things that she does, it’s really wonderful.

Mind of a Chef will always be the most amazing…Netflix, just binge on Mind of a Chef, I could do it over and over and over because it’s so awesome.

I’ve had a lot of really amazing food inspiration on Netflix, Jiro Dreams of Sushi and all the good ones that are on there that are just incredible.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

There’s so many great people making good food. I love all the big ones, I love Joy the Baker, I love Not Without Salt. I love Smitten Kitchen, she’s just incredible. I don’t even know how she does it, but every single recipe that she makes on Smitten Kitchen is just out of this world good..

I feel like there are always awesome ones that I’m discovering too, like Lady and Pups is really a cool one that does some awesome things. And I love My Name Is Yeh and all awesome newer people as well. Not totally new but just doing crazy, amazing things. I’m blown away by the blogosphere and all the great cooking being done.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook that make you happy?

On Pinterest and Instagram, I’m on there all the time. My friend A Daily Something is really awesome. Her children are the cutest. What she does on her Instagram blows me away. And so many great photographers, like With Hearts, who really are so inspiring and also are often in the Pacific Northwest and remind me of home and are so incredible.

On Pinterest, there are so many people who are awesome as well, and so prolific. Local Milk, obviously, I follow her on Instagram, she’s amazing on Instagram. But she’s also really prolific on Pinterest and has this awesome Pinterest account that is constantly making me discover new, awesome things that are really, really cool.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

I love picking up vintage things, I love bringing vintage things home, and you don’t always use them. Sometimes, they just sit around and they’re props or whatever they might be, and I’ve stolen every little weird vintage thermometer and various things from my grandma’s kitchen and have them in my drawers.

But one that we have is a juicer that we use constantly, which is actually vintage. Every time I use it, I think it’s gonna fall apart because it’s so old. But it’s also so effective and fantastic, and it really just has a handle, and you can squeeze down the handle, and juice. It’s a very, very good vintage juicer that we probably don’t need in our kitchen, but I like having it.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

Corn. I love it if it’s made a certain way. I eat a lot of foods, I’m really pretty open to almost…put anchovies on something, I’m totally fine. I like all olives and things. I taunt my husband with olives because he hates olives, and I love them. But I never really liked corn, which is a pretty basic food that I think that growing up, I just never had it cooked in a way that I really liked it.

As I’ve grown up, I have found that the fresher the corn the better. And there are definitely awesome things that you can do to corn, like chili lime seasoning or things that are really good that make it a much more awesome dish. I wouldn’t necessarily say that I love it now, but I like it a lot more than I did when I was younger.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Sugar Rush is a fairly new cookbook that I’m so impressed by, because the level of detail in the cooking and in the breaking down the processes that make for a good pastry kitchen are really broken down in a way that’s just so awesome. Also, I’ve always had my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook and the ones that I’ve had sitting around forever that my mom got me when I first moved out of the house and will always be on my shelf. Those are some that I return to the most often, because they’re really those staples that you have in the kitchen, and they have these recipes that you can take, and you can run with them as far as you wanna run with them and make them crazy. And that’s something I always love doing.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

The song or album right now that makes me want to do all of the things and get up and jump around is Shakey Graves’s new album, who is pretty awesome, and every song on there is really good. We saw him last year in this tiny little venue. We love going up to Newport Folk Fest in Newport, Rhode Island, and he was there and really knocked our socks off. So lately, when I’m in the kitchen, that’s what’s been playing on my speakers.

Since starting her blog in 2010, Sarah has inhabited seven different kitchens, graduated college, worked in marketing for a restaurant group and now works full-time on Broma Bakery. Her blog, Broma Bakery, is where she shares her love of food while indulging in her passion for photography.

On Her Blog:

My dad’s a reporter, so I’ve always been around cameras and film and all of that stuff. So, from a very young age, I was always interested in photography, not necessarily food photography, but just holding cameras, taking pictures, things like that. Then, when I went to college, I really missed doing photography on a more regular basis.

At college, you get so stuck up with studying and not so fun stuff. So, I just decided to pick up my camera and started shooting food. The blog and the photography really came together in the same moment, in that, I missed my mom’s baking. I wanted to have some creative outlet and I just put them together.

I had no formal training. I had never done food photography before. I just picked up a camera and went with it.

On Her Interest in Baking:

I was always more interested in baking. My sister is a huge cook; she has been interested in cooking since she was 13 years old. She would help my parents cook almost every meal at my house, so she took on that role and I stepped back. But I’d always loved sweets; I’ve always had a huge sweet tooth. So, the baking came along more natural to me and it was a nicer reward for me in the end, to be able to eat desserts.

It’s a lot more precise and it takes, for me, my development is a lot of going to tried and true recipes I’ve used before, bloggers that I trust, and creating something new, but a lot of it is really taking stuff that you know is going to work and then working off of that, because there’s been times when I’ve tried doing things just thinking that I could make cookies or a cake and it’s really a science. You need be precise in what you do.

On Her Passion for Photography:

I was doing a lot of portraits. I did photography courses all throughout high school and then some in college as well, but I was really into taking pictures of people. I really liked engaging with different people. There was something about, when you put somebody in front of the lens and I guess have them shine through your pictures.

I, again, just really taught myself. I think that, if you look on my blog, my styling is very minimal, but there definitely is a style to it. I’ll use plain backdrops and things like that. And, in terms of that portion of the site, I thought it was really important to engage with my readers, just because there are so many people out there that are interested in food and food photography, but don’t really know where to start.

So many of my friends that have come over and see me taking my photos, the first time when they come over, they were like, this is what it looks like? I mean, the behind the scene is a lot more thrown together than you’d think. So, I thought it was really important to put that on the site, to make it seem a lot more accessible to people, and hopefully get them to be able to be inspired and start photographing food.

On Working on Her Blog Full-Time:

I guess it was fortuitous, really. I was working at this restaurant job and things weren’t working out. I wanted to make a switch and instead of jumping into something right away, I thought my favorite part of this job has been taking pictures of food.

I have this baking blog. It’s gotten good reception so far. Let’s give it a couple of months and see if I can really push this to be my full-time job. So, I just took a leap and went for it. Two months passed and I was like, I want to keep working on this. Then four months passed and it’s really just gone from there. It’s something I feel fortunate enough to be able to do as my full-time job and it’s definitely something that I want to have continue grow. But, yeah, it sort of happened and I went with it.

Doing it as a side project, I didn’t really set a schedule for myself. I didn’t set different tasks I had to do to keep up with things. Things that most people don’t realize is that, there’s recipe development and there’s photographing, posting, getting them out there, but then there is so much, in terms of social media and marketing and even just connecting with other bloggers, that goes into creating a successful blog, that takes so much time.

For me, I’ll wake up at 9:00 and I’ll just get a cup of coffee and go straight to my computer, and then I’ll comment on other blogs, see what’s been going on with blogger friends that I know and that usually takes about two hours to really go through and engage with other people. Then, I’ll switch to doing some Pinteresting. Pinteresting is really important, keeping yourself active on that. So, I’ll do that probably for another hour, take a break for lunch and then right after lunch, I’ll go into making a recipe and then photographing it as well. That can take anywhere from an hour and a half to the whole afternoon. Then sometimes, if I can get a workout in, I’ll do that.

On Some Misconceptions About Baking:

I think that there are two main things. In general, when people see baking and they see a brownie that’s perfectly fudgy or a cake that’s three layers, it seems like there is a lot that goes into it. And sometimes there is, but especially with my style of baking, it’s a lot easier than it seems. I mean, it is very precise, but as long as you’re following along with those directions and really making sure you have quality ingredients, those two things will take you far in baking.

Then, I’d say the other thing that really I’ve seen prevents people from doing things is things like Pinterest and all these blogs that have popped up, because you see this final products and they seem so unattainable, just because there’s so many of them and there’s perfect lighting and there’s these perfect bit shots and all of that. I think that really scares people and it makes them think that it’s something they can’t do.

My biggest piece of advice would be to just go out and try one of those recipes, and really see how it goes. More often than not, you’ll be surprised with what you can do.

On Messing Up in the Kitchen:

There have been so many times. It still happens all the time.

There was this one time when my sister and I were making a chocolate beet cake, like with beets. We followed the directions and we put the cake in the oven, and then we realized, “oh my God,” we didn’t put the oil in. So, instead of just a beet cake, we put it on the blog and called it a low fat beet cake. It totally worked, but things like that happen all the time.

There was one I did this winter. I was trying to do peppermint cookies, so I chopped up little circular peppermints and I baked them. They came out of the oven and they completely melted off of the cookies. There were these little candy drippings everywhere. And it was just absolutely awful. So yeah, it’s a regular occurrence in the kitchen.

On Some Online Resources for Those Interested in Learning More about Baking:

One site that I go to very regularly is Food52. It’s a fantastic site. It’s basically recipes that people submit, as well as recipes that the professionals at Food52 will recreate and photograph themselves, but then, in addition, they have this whole tips and tricks section, where you can learn things like if your baking soda is expired and how to make the perfect loaf and things like that. It’s been really helpful for me and it’s just beautiful photography. It’s a really nice site layout. So, I definitely would suggest that.

In terms of books, I really grew up with The Joy of Cooking and that’s the book that we constantly pulled out, anytime we wanted a recipe. So, just going to classics like that is really great, because you can’t go wrong.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook that make you happy?

On Pinterest, I follow Half Baked Harvest. She’s an incredible photographer and she has really unique things. On Facebook, I follow Ambitious Kitchen. She does great healthy recipes, but then she also does some really fun workout stuff. On Instagram, Kale and Caramel. It’s really innovative desserts. I love it.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

I don’t think it’s unusual at all, but my KitchenAid is my baby. My boyfriend got it for my birthday a couple of years ago and I use it at least three or four times a week, and you can just do everything with it. So, it’s the most worth it gadget I’ve ever owned.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

I used to not like avocados. I thought they were overrated. I just didn’t get them and then one day, I just made avocado toast, because I was bored, and I’m obsessed with avocados now. I put them on sandwiches, I put them in my toast, put them with my eggs. Sometimes I’ll have them for dinner, love them.

Hello! I'm Gabriel Soh, home cook, food enthusiast and your host of The Dinner Special podcast.
Everything here on The Dinner Special is an experiment, just like with cooking. Thank you for listening and being part of the adventure.